Ideas for IDentity

How to cheat at everything and influence people

2010-06-09T23:46:00.000-07:00

In Finland, the art of imposture has gotten a lot of attention after a young man with no qualifications was caught working as a doctor. The young man was hired by two employers, neither of which had checked his background. He had convinced his employers by showing forged diplomas. After the incident, several other cases were revealed where unqualified persons had been hired to work in the Finnish health care sector.

The mentioned man´s reason for pretending to be a doctor was money, and the reward was high enough for him to justify the means.
The imposter’s monthly salary was over 4,000 Euros. This was enough for the young man to risk the health and life of his patients. According to the Finnish media, authorities have now checked the patient records of hundreds of people related to this case.

Meanwhile, a Swedish man was convicted in the Dutch court after being caught in the cockpit of a passenger plane. He had flown passenger planes with several airlines for 13 years with no qualifications. He had learned to fly by using a passenger plane simulator while working as an airline mechanic. Again, the key to his success was forging diplomas that nobody cared to check.

Authorities work hard to prevent cases like this. There are databases, where it is possible to run background checks for qualifications. However, the main problem has to do with a mixture of haste, lack of effort and the compromised usability of these services. In this case the impostor was caught because of his mistakes. Despite getting caught, he applied and was accepted to work in another hospital in Finland. He was hired, even though the National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health had already caught him. If only the employers had checked his background, he would have been caught already at the applicant stage.

Preventing cases like this should be handled in two ways. On one hand, the relevant data about a person´s work roles and positions should be aggregated to safe and convenient places, such as online portals. On the other hand, every single person hired to work in a responsible position should be identified in a more secure way than is possible with the current methods. Health care and aviation authorities are likely to be considering the options, but the new methods for accessing confidential information should actually be used throughout the society.

When considering the potential for improved and mobile identity services, identity thefts, scams and cons play a relatively small role. The real benefits of Mobile ID come from diminishing the daily grind, such as getting rid of excess amounts of individual identity cards e.g. for loyal customers.

If we take a look at an ordinary wallet, we are likely to find customer loyalty cards, which identify customers to merchants. Debit and credit cards identify customers to the payment systems of banks and credit card companies. We might also find some copy cards, library cards and a driving license. Imagine that one identity service could replace all this by sharing the relevant information with all parties. The wallet could thus be saved for truly important items, like cash and photos of your loved ones.

There’s No Such Thing as Free Bureaucracy

2010-02-26T05:07:00.000-08:00

The goal of ideal bureaucracy is a more rational and efficient organization, said the German sociologist Max Weber nearly one hundred years ago. I would like to add my two cents with a few suggestions.

Bureaucracy is mostly seen as an endless task of filling different forms, to be given to authorities, to be moved back and forth between them. The goal of the play is to prove various self-evident facts to different authorities.

In the coming years, many people will retire from administrative tasks in the public sector. Their positions will be filled in with fewer people. Using a worn-out phrase: to John Smith, this is both a threat and an opportunity.

The Worst-case-scenario: the world will be run as rigidly as ever, but with fewer people. The second worst-case-scenario: the web will be flooded with various forms to be filled in with a computer and then printed on paper and sent to authorities by snail mail. In my opinion, in an almost perfect world we could use governmental services as self-services whenever possible.

To John Smith, self-services mean easier living, as the public services can be accessed anywhere and anytime. There have been ambitious talks about a single public services portal in Finland, but it would be enough to have the services online in the first place. The browser window is a one-stop-shop: I am willing and able to move between different portals on the Internet. However, these portals should provide true e-service; I don´t want to print out papers of three different authorities from a portal just to fill them in and then return them back by snail mail.

The currently lacking transparency in public services could be easily increased with tracking codes. If I had a pending case in public administration, I could check the status of the case on the web with a mobile ID. I could see what has happened so far, what will happen next, who is working on the case at the moment and who I can contact if there seems to be a delay. I would also see who has access to my files and why.

I certainly don´t want to dispose of in-person customer service in the public sector. In complicated matters, the personal touch and face-time are needed. E-services could help to achieve just that; by replacing administrative routines with self-services, civil servants could be liberated to work on these more meaningful and relevant tasks.

The self-service concept of public services has been at the planning stage for years. One of the roadblocks has been the lack of common, secure and cost-efficient authentication. Another obstacle has been and still is the moving of public sector services online. The latter will surely take time and a lot of understanding and co-operation.

No queues, no hassle

2009-10-22T00:03:00.000-07:00

The first city was founded around 4 000 years b.c. As the word city can be defined as ”an area with enough people to form lines”, we can estimate the concept of queuing to be of roughly the same age, 6 000 years old.

The length and formation of lines can generally be managed by adjusting supply and demand. There are lines we can’t avoid, like the line to the late-night kebab place at 3 a.m. but there are lines we could shorten too. Like the queues to the cinema. Everyone arrives at last minute, either to buy or redeem reserved tickets, resulting in a queue.

How would I change this? I would like to get a simple web address included in movie posters and advertisements. With my mobile phone, I would enter the site, identify myself and reserve the needed number of best seats available. Later, when the actual sale of tickets starts, I would get a confirmation message about the tickets to my mobile phone. Then I could discard, reserve or buy the tickets, again directly with my mobile phone.

My calendar has a tendency to change. Therefore, I like to reserve tickets in advance, but leave the buying to the last minute. Nowadays, when I arrive to theater at the last minute, I have to queue to the counter and then dash sweating to my seat. One of the counters should be an express counter, which would just print out tickets I already bought on my way to theater, using my mobile phone. A non-printed mobile-ticket would of course be even better.

I could even accept ads of movies to my cell phone, but not just anything. I’d be happy to get notified of the new works of Pedro Almodovar or Quentin Tarantino, whereas ads of latest Dan Brown or Harry Potter screenplays fall into the other end of the spectrum.

Location-based advertising has been planned and pondered for a long time. Most of the scenarios have run into the same problem over and over again - how to get the permission to send the ads to the recipients. Few people wish to be bombarded with ads every time they are visiting downtown.

I’d be willing to accept current offers to my mobile phone for a certain period of time, for example for two hours, when I know where I’ll be and that I’ll have time to shop. When I´m going to movies and have a half an hour or fifteen minutes before the show, I´m not interested in strolling around looking for something interesting. However, I could visit one or two boutiques on the way, if I knew there’s something interesting for me. Anything that helps me avoid queues and get the right information at the right time is highly appreciated.

A small step towards a more convenient life

2009-09-11T05:21:00.000-07:00

Only few inventions that can make life easier, sound revolutionary when presented on paper. For example, Google was described as “a slightly better search engine”. Nowadays it is quite hard to find anyone who hasn’t used or learned something new just by googling.

Sometimes words just aren’t enough. One must experience to understand the new concept.

I believe that mobile ID will change the life for most of us like Google did. Mobile ID is a digital ID on your mobile device, which is usually with you all the time and ready for use. But why would we need a mobile ID if we already have debit and credit cards, smart cards and cash?

Let’s think about this a little and look at the world through the eyes of the young, who don’t know yet that everything worth inventing has already been done.
Let’s assume that your child is in a shopping mall and urgently needs some money. You will probably receive a call requesting some funds and if they are lucky, you agree. What would currently happen is that you go to a cash point, withdraw some money and your child will come and collect it from you. However, there would be a much more convenient way to go about. With mobile ID, you could authorise your child to get the cash from the nearest ATM without any hassle interrupting your day.
How about if you get sick and need to visit the doctor. Your prescription is delivered electronically to a pharmacy. Would you rather go home and stay in bed and ask someone else to fetch the medicines or queue with other feeble patients to get the medicines? I know what I would do. I would authorise someone else to pick up the prescription.

How would I do that, with mobile ID of course!

Our lives are becoming more digitalised and many of us want to be connected all the time. However the digital life could be so much easier, if we would not have to use different aliases and passwords to each service we use or to memorise various PIN codes for different websites every time we log on.

For years, the arrival of the convenient digital ID has been in the works. I believe that mobile ID can actually fulfil and exceed these promises. We are already using our mobile phones all the time, so what is stopping us turning them into mobile IDs? All that is needed is the four digit PIN code, regardless of its simplicity, it is highly secure.